
(e.g., Pontzen et al. 2017; Davis et al. 2019; Zheng et al. 2020).
However, it is very challenging to directly observe evidence of
ongoing AGN activity. Several studies have shown that PSBs
have emission diagnostics similar to LINERs (e.g., French et al.
2015). Galactic outflows have been observed for a number of
PSBs (e.g., Baron et al. 2017; Maltby et al. 2019), and given
their high speed (>1000 km s
−1
), the outflows are thought to be
driven by ejective AGN feedback (e.g., Förster Schreiber et al.
2019).
At high redshifts, it is often very challenging to spectro-
scopically confirm PSBs, thus many studies focus on young
quiescent galaxies (in many cases, photometrically selected),
which are most likely to be recently and rapidly quenched (e.g.,
Whitaker et al. 2012a; Wild et al. 2016; Belli et al. 2019; Suess
et al. 2020). Therefore, it is not clear whether these young
quiescent galaxies had a starburst in the past and then rapidly
quenched (thus, being truly “post-starburst”)or simply had a
sudden quenching after a relatively flat star formation history
(SFH; e.g., Wild et al. 2020). The fraction of quiescent galaxies
that are young increases with redshift (Whitaker et al. 2012b;
Wild et al. 2016; Belli et al. 2019), suggesting that the rapid
quenching process seems to become more important and
common at high redshifts. Several studies have also attempted
to constrain the quenching timescales of galaxies, both in
observations (e.g., Tacchella et al. 2022a)and simulations (e.g.,
Rodriguez-Gomez et al. 2019; Park et al. 2022), both at low
and high redshifts. They found that galaxies at high redshifts
tend to be more rapidly quenched (typically <1 Gyr), while at
low redshifts, they have a broad range of quenching timescales
(up to several Gyr). The PSBs are also more frequently found at
high redshifts (>5%)than in the local Universe (<1%; e.g.,
Wild et al. 2016), and the existence of quiescent galaxies found
at very high redshifts (z>3; e.g., Franx et al. 2003; Forrest
et al. 2020), when the age of the Universe is less than a few
Gyr, requires a very rapid quenching process. Indeed,
D’Eugenio et al. (2020)studied nine spectroscopically
confirmed quiescent galaxies at z∼3 and showed that their
average spectra are very similar to those of PSBs.
However, it is not yet clear how much of the quiescent
population was built up through the rapid quenching phase.
Different studies have estimated how many quiescent galaxies
have gone through the rapid quenching phase, and the
conclusions are often sensitive to the definition of post-
starburst and strongly depend on redshift. For example, Belli
et al. (2019)identified rapidly quenched PSB galaxies as young
quiescent galaxies with mean ages of 300–800 Myr and found
that the contribution of rapid quenching to the buildup of the
red sequence is ∼20% at z∼1.4 and ∼50% at z∼2.2. Wild
et al. (2016)also used photometric data (using a supercolor
selection)to identify post-starbursts and concluded that the
post-starburst phase accounts for 25%–50% of the growth of
the red sequence at z∼1. In summary, quite a significant
fraction of quiescent galaxies can be explained by the PSB
phase (e.g., Snyder et al. 2011; Wild et al. 2016; Dhiwar et al.
2023), especially at higher redshifts, highlighting the impor-
tance of the rapid quenching phase.
In this study, we focus on a population of young quiescent
galaxies at z∼1.5 (with inferred mean stellar ages below
300 Myr), which has not been explored before, to understand
the rapid quenching process at high redshifts and the
significance of the rapid quenching phase in galaxy evolution.
In Section 2, we describe the photometric data we use and how
we select 12 rapidly quenched candidates at z∼1.5 based on
their rest-frame color. We also describe the Magellan/FIRE
spectroscopic observation we conducted on a subset of our
sample. In Section 3, we present results about their SFHs, sizes,
and information we can learn from emission lines detected
from spectroscopic observation. In Section 4, we estimate how
many quiescent galaxies have gone through the rapid
quenching phase, based on the crossing time of the rapid
quenching region. In Section 5, using the TNG100 simulation,
we identify rapidly quenched analogs and study what caused
the starburst and rapid quenching at high redshifts. Finally, in
Section 6, we discuss in more detail the size evolution of young
quiescent galaxies and what it suggests, and also the possible
physical mechanisms responsible for this rapid quenching, and
discuss the overall picture of quenching at high redshifts. The
summary and conclusion of our work is given in Section 7.
2. Data and Sample Selection
2.1. Selection of Rapidly Quenched Candidates from the
UltraVISTA Catalog
At high redshifts (z>1), it is very challenging to identify
spectroscopically confirmed PSBs, as it requires much more
time to detect the Balmer absorption lines that indicate the
presence of young stellar populations. Therefore, we follow
the method used in Belli et al. (2019), where they inferred the
mean stellar ages based on the location in the UVJ diagram
(i.e., rest-frame U−Vversus V−Jcolors). We select the
youngest quiescent galaxies with inferred ages <300 Myr,
which are the most likely to be rapidly quenched. Note that
these galaxies are the youngest tail of the quiescent galaxies,
carefully selected as potentially having a significant starburst
and rapid quenching. Some of the slightly older (but still
young)quiescent galaxies would have also been rapidly
quenched, as shown in the work of Belli et al. (2019), where
they studied young quiescent galaxies with inferred ages of
300–800 Myr. In the present work, we focus on this extremely
young population (with inferred ages <300 Myr)to investigate
the rapid quenching phase more clearly. We describe below in
more detail how we select the parent sample and our “rapidly
quenched”candidates.
We use the COSMOS/UltraVISTA (UVISTA)catalog
(Muzzin et al. 2013a)and select galaxies in the photometric
redshift 1.25 <z<1.75 with ()MMlog 10.6
stellar . The
redshift range is chosen so that the most important optical
absorption and emission line features can be observed in the
near-IR from the ground. We exclude objects that have
K
s
>23.4, as they are likely to be point sources, and those
having bad fits to their photometry (chi2 >1.5). Figure 1
shows the parent sample as gray triangles in the rest-frame UVJ
diagram. The UVJ colors are from the UVISTA catalog, where
the rest-frame colors are calculated with the EAZY code
(Brammer et al. 2008). Following Belli et al. (2019), we use the
rotated coordinates in the UVJ plane (see also Fang et al. 2018),
defined as follows, which help us quantify the age trend along
the diagonal direction:
=-+-
=- - + -
() ( )
() ( )
SVJUV
CVJUV
0.75 0.66
0.66 0.75 .
Q
Q
Then, the median stellar age of galaxies (t
50
)can be inferred
from the UVJ colors as follows: =+
-
()tlog yr 7.03
50 1
*1.12 SQ. Belli et al. (2019)calibrated this approximate relation
2
The Astrophysical Journal, 953:119 (20pp), 2023 August 10 Park et al.